Superhero Sandbagged

Spider-Man 3

Tobey Maguire plays the title role in Spider-Man 3, which kicks off the summer movies season.Credit
Columbia Pictures

If ever a movie had a case of the blues and the blahs, it’s “Spider-Man 3,” the third and what feels like the end of Sam Raimi’s big-screen comic-book adaptations. (Ready or not, the studio is talking about a fourth.) Aesthetically and conceptually wrung out, fizzled rather than fizzy, this latest installment in the spider-bites-boy adventure story shoots high, swings low and every so often hits the sweet spot, but mostly just plods and plods along, as if its heart were pumping tired radioactive blood.

Maybe it’s middle age. In fictional terms Spider-Man a k a Peter Parker a k a Tobey Maguire looks like he’s pushing 23, but there’s something about the guy that shrieks midlife crisis. Peter is still hitting the books and still snapping photographs for The Daily Bugle, run by the flattop blowhard J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons, in clover, as usual). It’s a living, kind of, enough for an enviably situated dump in Manhattan with artfully peeling walls and a fabulous picture window through which Peter regularly bounds into the air in full superhero drag. (The neighbors in this part of town evidently always keep the blinds drawn.) It’s a calling, sort of, though it’s also started to feel a bit like punching the clock.

The programmatic screenplay credited to Mr. Raimi, his brother Ivan Raimi (a third Raimi brother, Ted, plays a tiny role in the picture) and Alvin Sargent certainly feels more like work than play. The big selling point in “Spider-Man 3” is that Spider-Man or Peter or some combination of the two discovers his so-called dark side when an inky extraterrestrial glob (a symbiote in Marvel-speak) spreads its gooey tentacles over his body, turning his suit and soul black. Though there’s something dubious about the idea that black still conveys evil in our culture, pop or otherwise (tell it to Batman and Barack Obama, for starters), the idea of messing with Spider-Man’s squeaky-clean profile, smearing it with dirt, a touch of naughtiness, seems too good to resist.

It’s also too good to be true. There’s no knowing if the problem is bottom-line reserve, or a lack of imagination or creative nerve, but Spider-Man’s voyage into darkness turns out to be little more than an overnighter. The goo transforms Spider-Man, but the alteration barely registers. There’s some wacky, misguided nonsense involving Peter’s super-inflated ego and Mr. Raimi’s apparent desire to direct a musical, as well as fleeting nastiness with a resurrected foe, Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church), recently escaped from prison. Marko has the makings of a super-antagonist, and Mr. Church brings a touching delicacy to the few short scenes in which you can see his face, the skin pulled back so tightly that you fear his jagged cheekbones might pierce right through.

With his hard-body physique and a striped shirt that evokes a 1930s chain gang, Marko also feels and looks like a fugitive from an earlier era, one of the film’s many such nostalgic flourishes. Marko’s earthbound trudge makes it seem as if he’s dragging a literal ball and chain, not just the baggage of a sick daughter and a cranky missus (Theresa Russell, in and out like the Flash). And when he rises from a bed of sand after a “particle atomizer” scrambles his molecules, his newly granulated form shifts and spills apart, then lurches into human form with a heaviness that recalls Boris Karloff staggering into the world as Frankenstein’s monster. There’s poetry in this metamorphosis, not just technological bravura, a glimpse into the glory and agony of transformation.

It’s this combination of exaltation and dread that can come with radical life change that made the first film work as well as it did. The first “Spider-Man” never soared, but there was something very appealing about the image of a skinny, geeky adolescent struggling to rise to the occasion of his newfound powers, like a 97-pound weakling tiptoeing on the beach after getting with the Charles Atlas program. Part of the allure of superheroes, of course, is how they serve as wish fulfillments for the faithful, allowing their mild-mannered fans to settle scores and snare the babe by proxy. But nothing seems to put a damper on interesting self-doubt faster than fame, or so this film and its lead character both seem intent on proving.

Success may not have spoiled Mr. Raimi as it has Peter Parker, but it seems as if it has zapped his gracious good humor, which was so critical to the first two films. The story this time unfolds as a series of increasingly dreary and teary melodramatic encounters regularly interrupted by special-effects-laden fights. As it happens, the over-all shape does recall a Busby Berkeley musical — snappy story, lavish number, snappy story, lavish number — but without the snap or fun. Peter ignores his girlfriend, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), so she reaches out to her friend and his frenemy, Harry Osborn (James Franco), a k a Son of the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe, revived in flashback), while Peter turns to his Aunt May (Rosemary Harris), who shovels the manure with grace.

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And so it goes as the Sandman cometh and goeth and a twerp named Eddie Brock (Topher Grace, running fast with a small role) throws a couple of monstrous hissy fits. Bryce Dallas Howard shows up to smile at the camera, as does a marvelous Bruce Campbell, who almost swallows it whole. Ms. Dunst looks a bit lost, at times even bereft, but you want to catch hold of her story line and follow her home. When she tramps across the screen, this wispy, sad-eyed beauty turns into Melancholy Girl, able to melt hearts in a single glance. For his part Mr. Maguire needs to stop relying on those great big peepers of his: simply widening your eyes to attract attention does not cut it when you’re over 30.

It’s hard not to think that Mr. Raimi would rather follow Ms. Dunst to wherever her story might take them too. And while Marko is mainly around to show off the franchise’s snazzy special effects, it feels as if the director has put quite a bit of himself into the Sandman, whose struggle to find a form that suits his talents has the sting of a metaphor. The bittersweet paradox of this franchise is that while the stories have grown progressively less interesting the special effects have improved tremendously, becoming at once more plausible — when Spider-Man swings through the urban canyons he finally looks almost real — and more spectacular. In Sandman you see the vestiges of Mr. Raimi’s personal touch slipping through a nearly empty hourglass.

Directed by Sam Raimi; written by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent, from the screen story by Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi based on the Marvel comic book by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko; director of photography, Bill Pope; edited by Bob Murawski; visual effects supervisor, Scott Stokdyk; music themes by Danny Elfman, score by Christopher Young; production designers, Neil Spisak and J. Michael Riva; produced by Laura Ziskin, Avi Arad and Grant Curtis; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 139 minutes.